Woman in the Dunes, an art-house film from the 60s still worth watching

The Woman in the Dunes (dr. Hiroshi Teshigahara) was one of the great so-called "art house" pictures of its time (1964) and for many Americans their first look at a serious, postwar Japanese film (I don't know what became of Teshigahara - for some reason his stature never rose to the level of Ozu, Kurosawa, et al.); I recently read (see Elliots Reading blog) the source novel, by Kobo Abe, and as Abe did the screenplay for the movie it's not surprise the that the movie adheres closely to the novel: 30-something school teacher and amateur entymologist ventures into a vast area of sand dunes on the coast of Japan. He misses the last bus home and is offered overnight accommodations in a small house in a deep hollow among the dunes, inhabited by a young widow. Once he's lowered down to the house, he's kept imprisoned there and forced to join the woman in nightly labor of shoveling away the ever-encroaching sand that threatens her dwelling. We later learn that the villagers sell the sand to a concrete company in an illicit scheme. The man makes several failed attempts at escape; he also begins sexual relationship with the young woman. Ultimately (spoiler!) he foregoes a final chance to escape and stays on with the woman - written off in Japan, as we see in the last pp of the novel and final shot of the film - as a missing person. In both novel and film we know little about his "outside" life - though the novel makes it more cleat that he's not married and has a cynical and loveless ongoing sexual relationship with a woman. The narrative is a stretch, though just barely plausible, if taken on the literal level, but of course it's impossible not to think of the movie/novel in figurative, symbolic, or allegorical terms: are we all just spending our lives shoveling sand away in order to survive/endure? I don't adhere to that interpretation, and, as noted in my other blog, I believe the film is about Japanese culture post WWII, digging out from the wreckage, feeling hopeless and ashamed, at the mercy of corrupt contractors, struggling to uncover and preserve any vestment of Japanese culture, society, architecture, public services. The novel is very good and, in a rare instance, I have to say the film is even better: Teshigahara really makes us feel the frightening hopelessness of life in this flimsy structure and the base of a frightening hill of heavy sand - just a terrific job of stage and design, in a project that would have seemed almost impossible. The scene in which the villagers crowd the rim on the sand cliff taunting the man and woman and urging them to engage in sex spectacle is creepy and fantastic, unforgettable. All told, this is an art film that doesn't feel quaint and dated - still worth watching both for its literal story line and its many allusions.